User blog:Freelancer Tucker/Issues Part One
January 19th, 2572, Eden The problem with family reunions, Zee realized, as he coughed up the fine mist of what was once asphalt and the night wind bit into his exposed face, was that the could happen in the most inconvenient places. He grinned at the man known as X, even as his almost-father threw his nice warm Cineris-silk mask aside like a piece of trash. “That was a gift, Jayson.” “So, you’re the one playing hero in the streets?” X raked his dead eyes over him as if he was studying a troublesome puzzle, trying to correlate just where he had gone wrong in his planning; how this petulant punk could turn against him for platitudes and a ‘false family’ ; enumerating every detail of the dirty young face that he had saved from the streets; before dismissing it all. “Such a disappointment.” “Well, we can’t all dress up like Skeletor when we go out at night, certainly not without the budget you’re packing.” Zee cracked his neck as an excuse to survey the scraggy lot outside Europa Chemicals, where he had definitely not wanted to be tonight. The river lapped at the edge of hearing, almost drowned out by the sounds of traffic on the overpass, nary a human presence in sight. This wasn't good. He knew X held a conservative fifty pounds on him, in addition to the body armor and bladed weaponry he usually hid somewhere around his person, but X would certainly have counted on his dominance as well, and Zee could already picture the smile behind the older man’s mask, like a flash of a coyote’s fangs as it snarled. Manic and unbridled from the hunt presented. He closed in with the confident stride of an apex predator. A sort of raggedy hockey player, an image almost funny enough to cheer Zee up. The workers that had been inside the building had scattered as soon as he whipped out an explosive to chuck at his own son, at least; Zee wasn’t sure if they had been simply working late or if his father-lite had payed them to be there, screaming for help when none was needed. He fell back, knowing all too well that he was going to be cornered against the factory in a couple of yards. He needed a plan. He’d been unmasked, which wasn’t great in any situation, but clearly X desired something more from him than to shatter his sense of security. Thankfully, he had recently acquired a policy of not giving the old man what he wanted. “Are you running away?” X mocked, taking another step, getting both of them nowhere fast. “It seems like that’s the only thing you’re good for.” “You did teach me about he who fights and runs away…” Zee bolted, leaving the usual flash of ozone and distinct ‘pop’ that accompanied the use of his powers. It was only a temporary stop-gap however, just enough to put distance between himself and the other man. Making it to the corner of the building, he swarmed the chain-link fence surrounding the property, inelegantly leaping from there onto the edge of a half-open window, slithering inside with all of his might. Landing on his stomach with a groan, he found himself on a catwalk, the railing being the only thing to have kept him from falling further down to his death. From the looks of things they were there for the maintenance of giant solar lights that were, at the moment, dark. Zee pulled himself up into a crouching position, trying to steady his breathing. He was taking no chances with how well hidden he could be in the dim room, the only light source being the violently blue vats rolling thirty-odd feet below him. He wasn’t sure what they contained, but at the movement, he could care less. This wasn’t the first time X had attacked him with an intent to kill; usually it only ended with some bruises and sour words exchanged between them, and in his hearts-of-hearts he had always hoped that the closest thing he had to a parent could win out against the hate that filled him. Still, in those encounters he had been prepared, fresh from some mission with his blade in hand. Right now, he had nothing; he had been on his way home from giving a very heavy-handed lesson about the definition of property to some punks. His innate natural abilities did most of the work, and while he had procured a stray metal pipe between stumbling upon X and almost meeting his end to a plastique explosive, it had been dropped in the lot alongside his mask. He was alone and defenseless. The sound of footsteps alerted him to X’s presence, and Zee pressed himself as low to the catwalk’s thin metal floor as he could without actually laying flat against it. The metallic ‘thunk’ of boots on metal grew closer and closer, shaking the catwalk with increased fervor. “You are a failure.” X murmured into the darkness, poisonous, unruffled. Barely loud enough to echo in the empty warehouse. “Everything you are comes from me.” “Maybe that’s true,” Zee allowed, doing his best to throw his voice away from himself. Not answering would have been the smart course of action, the one that kept him alive, but to leave such an sleight unanswered felt wrong, as if he was giving in. “But I’m learning.” “Is that so?” “Yes, I have...Friends now. People who care about me.” “You really think they care about you?” X questioned with a snort, “You think they can give you a home? A family? They’re a group of freaks.” His steps continued to rattle the catwalk, betrayal coloring his tone something fierce and ugly. “Pathetic washouts who run around with no authority, acting like the universe welcomes their interference.” “The universe would be gone without th-..Us. Without us.” Zee felt his body tense as X’s visage grew closer, the dim blue light below giving his costume the look of a phantasm. Perhaps the older man had always planned to corner him here like this; a kind of psychological subterfuge, Death beckoning his wayward son to his demise. “We make everything better so people don’t have to be afraid. Isn’t that what we wanted?” “You idealistic fool,” X disparaged with an almost apologetic softness, stopping in his hunt momentarily. His head shaking slowly was if he was still a parent disappointed in his child’s ways. “You were sent to them to see the truth, not to blind yourself to reality. I failed you in that regard, I gave you too much of a burden and you caved to their whims. You weren’t ready for responsibility.” Zee found himself shaking in anger, he had tried to steel himself for the rhetoric thrown around by the other man but to no avail, every word was another piece of shrapnel being pushed into his heart. Deliberately. Delicately. “You’re still just a child, Zimmerman.” He was no longer able to abide by the cat-and-mouse hunt he had found himself in, and so he stood, his hands balling into fists. “You shut your mouth, old man.” He demanded through clenched teeth, every thought shouting for the man's blood to be spilled. “You gave me my new name, you need to use it or you shut up.” X turned to him, flicking his wrist to produce another knife in his hand. The blade all but poised to be thrown in his direction. “Does it matter? Zimmerman or Zee, you're both failures to me, as both a son and a weapon. There's no use for you anymore." The knife was flung without warning, and Zee reacted in the only way he knew how. He sped towards it. He pushed himself to move faster than he normally dared to go, recklessly apathetic to the danger of burning himself up. He was lost to a blinding rush brought on by his hate and X's words, appearing as little more than a blur to the rest of the world. His only focus was on reaching X, wanting to silence him by force. The knife found itself sheathe in the flesh of the area between Zee's shoulder and neck, the serrated blade only digging itself deeper inside him as he crashed into X's sturdy body, sending both of them over the railing. Zee could only remember a dissonant calm as they fell, before meeting the ground that been eagerly awaiting their arrival. Category:Blog posts